President Barack Obama has backed off a request for Congress to give his administration more latitude to deport illegal immigrant children coming to the U.S. from Central America, two high-profile Republican members of Congress said today.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul claimed this morning that the president did not include a formal request for Congress to change the existing law after telling them in a letter last week he supported revisions because his party successfully pressured him not to.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi did not indicate that her caucus had asked the president to backtrack but made clear today in her weekly briefing with reporters that she was not in favor of amending the law to allow the Department of Homeland Security to immediately send children from non-contiguous countries back home.

President Barack Obama, pictured here today in Austin, Texas, was expected to formally ask Congress to loosen deportation restrictions for illegal immigrant children from Central America but that hasn't happened

President Obama arrives at an event on the economy at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas this afternoon

Current law requires children who illegally immigrate to the U.S. through the southern border and originate from anywhere but Mexico be taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security. DHS then has 72 hours to turn them over to the Department of Health and Human Services. From there, the government requires that they are given court dates and hearings to determine if they qualify for refugee status before they can be returned to their home countries.

The White House has admitted that very few of the children will actually obtain refugee status, so giving them due process, which can take months, is a mostly a waste of time and money.

In a letter to congressional leaders last Monday, President Obama said his administration would be following up with an official request to have the 2008 law loosened.

'We are eager to work with the Congress to ensure that we have the legal authorities to maximize the impact of our efforts Government-wide strategy as the influx of migrants continues,' Obama said.

'Initially, we believe this may include...providing the DHS Secretary additional authority to exercise discretion in processing the return and removal of unaccompanied minor children from non-contiguous countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador,' Obama said, 'and increasing penalties for those who smuggle vulnerable migrants, like children.'

The president also forewarned congressional leaders that he would be asking them for additional funds for agencies that handle illegal immigration in order to pay for a variety of programs associated with the surge in unaccompanied minors crossing the border.

More than 52,000 children, coming primarily from Central America, have crossed the border since last October, and the administration expects as many as 100,000 to come before year's end.

President Obama meets with University of Austin student Kinsey Button, right, at the Magnolia Cafe in Austin, Texas this morning. The president is a short plane ride away from the border but has no plans to visit it before returning to Washington this afternoon

Yet, when the president made his request on Tuesday for $3.7 billion in supplemental funds for immigration authorities he did not include legislative language to reform the 2008 trafficking law.

The president said in a letter accompanying his budget request that he would work with Congress to amend the law separately.

At a press briefing later that afternoon, White House Press Secretary John Earnest played down concerns that the president was walking back his call for Congress to change the law. Earnest said the administration didn't include specific language simply because it wanted to give Congress the space to do its job.

He also divulged that senior White House officials had been in touch with senior officials of Congress to discuss what the amended law might look like.

Pressed to explain what the White House would like to see Congress give
DHS the ability to do other than have 'more discretion,' Earnest was unable to
come up with an answer.

The president neither wants Central American children to bypass medical
care by HHS nor does he want them to be denied due process, he said, effectively ruling out changes to the main steps in the deportation process.

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At the time, the newly minted White House press secretary's comments were interpreted as either verbal ineptitude or evidence that the White House does not have a strategy to deal with the crisis at the border outside of throwing money at the problem.

However, statements by members of Congress on Thursday suggest that the White House was in fact being purposefully opaque about legislative changes it would like to see to to the immigration law because its earlier proposition fell flat with members of the Democratic Party.

In a speech on the Senate floor earlier today, Minority Leader McConnell accused the president of requesting a 'blank check' from Congress.

'He led Americans to
believe that the problem could be solved if only Congress would pass his
last-minute request. But it’s not that simple – much more needs to be
done, and the President knows it,' the Republican leader said.

'His original letter to Congress called
for reforms we all know are needed to address this crisis. Under
pressure from the Left, he has since backed away from those critical
reforms, but lawmakers in both parties have not.'

In an interview on Fox News this morning, House Homeland Security Chairman McCaul also suggested that Obama changed his tune because he couldn't get his party, which controlled Congress when the trafficking law was passed in 2008, to get behind amending it.

'Well, initially he talked about changing
this 2008 law, which when Mexicans cross they are expeditiously removed.
When other than Mexicans cross, like Central America, a different
policy,' McCaul said. 'All we wanna do is make the policy the same with Mexicans and
other than Mexicans.'

'The president was going to propose that idea, and
then for some reason - I think because he got hit by the Left -
retracted that policy and now is throwing it on the Congress to resolve
that problem,' he added.

President Obama greets people as he arrives to buy BBQ at Franklin Barbeque in Austin

Obama cut two people in line, but made up for it by paying for their meals

Obama tried to pay for the meals with cash but had to pay with a card after he realized the bill was more than $300

McCaul and McConnell's suspicions are backed up by comments made by members of the president's party.

In an interview with USA Today published Tuesday evening, Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards came out against the president's proposal.

'You know what, it feels very piecemeal to me,' she said. 'I think one reason
we're in this crisis right now is we haven't dealt with immigration in a
comprehensive kind of way.'

'I would worry that if we start picking and
choosing which parts of the law we're going to enforce or repeal, that
we're not going to get to the core of what the problem is,' she continued.

House Minority Leader Pelosi told reporters today that if Congress made any changes to the law at all, she would prefer that Mexican children be treated the same as Central American children and be given health screenings and court hearings instead of being automatically sent home rather than Central American children being shut of the court system.

'I would hope they would not make that change,' she said, referring to Central American children being sent home as soon as they reach the border. However, she said 'it's not a deal-breaker.'

'Quite Frankly, I think that Republicans would like to do worse,' she said, so 'let's mitigate with that change for increased resources' for things like due process, and pass a bill to help the children.

House Speaker John Boehner was tight-lipped today about his position on Obama's request for additional funding and the absence of language in the request for changes to the 2008 trafficking law.

'Well isn't that convenient,' is all he had to say when a reporter brought up the president's backtrack.

Asked by another reporter if he thought the law should be changed, Boehner said, 'I do, and I think the president agrees with it as well.'

Boehner said he still needed to talk to his caucus before making a final
decision on whether to approve Obama's request for supplemental funding
but said the one thing he would not do is write the president a blank
check.

Neither Bohener's office nor McConnell's offices returned requests for comments on whether the Republican leaders had discussed changes to the trafficking law with the White House in the last week.

At a hearing this afternoon on the president's budget request, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson clarified that one of the changes the White House would like to see to immigration legislation is the authority to ask unaccompanied children who originate from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to voluntarily return home without going through the standard immigration process.

Johnson said the White House believes that would significantly speed up the rate of repatriation.